The differences that have been indicated between the sexes in
this essay do not form a hard-and-fast dividing line. Men are not
all intellect and consciousness, nor are women all intuition and
unconsciousness. It would be juster to say that some men are more
intellectual than any woman, and some women more intuitive than any
man: but even this statement does not adequately cover the case. The
different determination of energy which hinders women from supreme
intellectual detachment, and men from supreme human understanding, is
subtly operative between these two extremes throughout the intervening
space where men and women have a common field of action. It should
therefore be traceable in their respective contributions to art.
It is perhaps unwise though interesting to attempt the drawing of
distinctions between men’s art and women’s: so much depends upon one’s
idea of the nature of art. But it may be possible without becoming
entangled in controversy to suggest tentatively some differences, and
it seems worth while to see how far the argument will carry us.
From the point of view of this inquiry a work of art ranks as a
supremely conscious creation. It has perfection of form and it is
permanent: _ars longa, vita brevis_. But it is also directly and
vitally connected with the forces of unconscious life; it depends
upon, or rather it is characterised by an intensity of emotion which
it transmits as if by magic to other people than its creator. Its form
can be judged dispassionately, but not its content. It is detached
from human life, and is at the same time a revelation of it in a way
which is more immediate and more moving than a mere explanation. Thus,
although it is as deliberate a product of conscious processes as a
mathematical theory or a philosophical idea, or an economic system, it
is more intimately linked to unconscious life than any of these; it is
perhaps closer to unconscious life than any other kind of conscious
creation. For this reason, because it belongs to both worlds, the
esteem in which it is held varies according to the values of the people
among whom it is practised. And in certain cases the place assigned
to art seems to confirm the general theory of this essay, that women
create unconscious more than conscious life, and that men associate the
values of unconscious life with women. For in communities which are too
rigidly organised, because entirely devoted to some system, and which
therefore distrust the personal values of unconscious life, communities
such as those of the business men here or in the United States, art
is distrusted, the artist is considered to be effeminate, and the
appreciation and culture of art are left half contemptuously, half
respectfully to the women. On the other hand, in communities where the
framework of conscious life has not hardened and unconscious values are
not depreciated, the formal perfection of art arouses men’s admiration,
and the artist is looked upon as the best type of manhood. The artist
must thus possess both masculine and feminine qualities; that is to
say, he has immediate access to the intuitions of unconscious life, as
a woman has, and he creates conscious form, as a man does.
It has been already admitted that the difference between men and
women is only a relative difference, that men have unconscious and
women conscious powers; the fact that art belongs to both worlds
therefore allows both men and women to be artists, while at the
same time it makes more difficult than ever the attempt to draw a
distinction between men’s art and women’s. There are, however, one or
two possibilities which suggest themselves. In the first place, if
the energy of women is more absorbed by unconscious life than that of
men, it can play less freely in the world of conscious form and is
therefore less able to achieve that perfect fusion of form and content
on a grand scale which is supreme art. Certainly the greatest artists
of historical times have been men, and there is no reason to think that
the domination of men is even partly responsible for the lack of great
women artists. But if women are handicapped in those arts, such as
literature, painting, and the composition of music, where the finished
product takes a permanent form detached from the human personality
of the artist, they should have an advantage in arts like dancing,
singing, and acting, where the actual personality is the medium of
expression. And as a matter of fact in arts of this kind women have
attained supreme rank. It seems permissible to say that the nearer they
are to concrete human life, the more freely and naturally they can
create.
Again, it may be suggested that the tendency to elaborate form at the
expense of content is a danger to which men are more susceptible in
art than women. Women’s greater vitality and comparative weakness in
conscious life expose them rather to the opposite fault, a failure to
achieve a strictness of form perfectly adequate to the intensity of
the emotion expressed. This weakness would be more likely to occur
in the rendering of a sustained than of a transient emotion or mood;
consequently one would expect perfection of form from women artists in
works of small compass and natural spontaneity, such as lyric poems,
rather than in an epic or a long descriptive poem. The more elastic the
form, the more shapeless it is, the more women are able to use it for
sustained work. In literature, at least, this seems to be true. The
loose bulk of the novel makes it attractive to women as a medium of
expression; and any long works of the first rank written by women are
to be found in this form.
Further, since it is women’s business to create individuals rather than
systems of society, one would expect the art of women to be concerned
largely with actual individual experience and concrete situations. In
one sense, of course, all art must do this; but individual experience
can be transmuted into symbols and so generalised, or projected into
future worlds, and that is precisely what women are unlikely to do. No
woman has ever written a great myth or a Utopia.
Finally, if women are essentially creators of human life, we may
surmise that they are more interested in the relation of art to life
than in art for art’s sake. But this supposition must be made with many
qualifications. It is not suggested that in the act of creating or
appreciating a work of art women pause to ask, “Of what use is this to
life?” If the emotion that they experience is authentic and vivid they
will accept its significance simply, as they accept the significance
of any vivid experience. But it is suggested that if they reflect upon
art at all, this is precisely the question, formulated or not, which
will decide their attitude to it. In estimating a work of art women are
more likely to be influenced by its content than by its form, and they
are capable of drawing practical conclusions from it which would hardly
occur to men.
Among the different kinds of art, those which express themselves in a
medium closely related to the normal activities of daily life seem to
be the most favourable for women. There are more great women artists
in literature than in sculpture or painting, and more in these than in
music. Literature is expressed through language, which is a medium in
constant use between individuals; a paint brush in our civilisation
is a less usual means of expression, and the making of music still
less usual. One might also hazard a guess that in literature the
vocabulary of women contains fewer unusual words than that of men. For
the difference between spoken and written language is roughly analogous
to the difference between women and men; a correspondence which may
influence the style of women both as speakers and writers and their
preferences as readers.
X
It may be affirmed, then, that women are more directly linked to
concrete life than men, and that they naturally incline to utilitarian
standards in judging the importance of things. Men create ideas, and
women make use of them: women create human beings, and men make use
of them: both men and women seize what they need for the service of
their own purposes. Is this difference discernible in the intellectual
work of educated women, in the subjects they deliberately choose
for research, and in the contributions they make to knowledge? This
question, and many others, remain to be answered; and, with them, the
fundamental question whether the education of women, and especially
their “higher education,” is planned to secure the development of
an enlightened womanhood, as distinct from manhood. The present
inquiry pretends to be nothing more than a stimulus to the further
investigation of essential differences between men and women; but it
is clear that if there is any truth in our conclusions, an honest
re-statement of women’s aims is necessary. The conception of womanhood
which has been adumbrated here, if it is accepted, demands so many
adjustments in the attitude of women towards themselves, towards
morality, religion, sex, and education that it is impossible within the
limits of this essay to give even a hint of them.